2,018 miles in 2018 Challenge: Week 4

The more I run, the easier it gets. I found myself upping the speed on the treadmill this week and my runs felt easier than normal.

The more I run, the less I want to do other exercises, like weights. It takes less brain power to lace up and run than do my weight routine.

I’m gaining weight….why??????

I’ve run 200.8 miles since January 1st, and last year I was only running maybe 18 miles a week / 54 miles a month. I still exercised six days a week, but I did weight training on the other days.

The thing that’s odd is that I’m definitely burning more calories running, or at least that is what my watch says. It pretty much reflects 100 calories burned per mile. When I do my weight workouts, I burn between 350-500 calories in a session vs. the 600-800 during a run. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I may need to add more weight training if I can fit it in.

I’m a data person, so I ran some stats for my running:

Monday, January 22: 7 miles run (9.88 total)

Tuesday, January 23: 6 miles run (6.15 miles total)

Wednesday, January 24: 8.3 miles run (11.54 total)

Thursday, January 25: 9.58 miles run (12.65 total)

Friday, January 26: 13 miles run (13.81 total)

Total miles run: 53.88

Total miles: 64.81

I also added up the total amount of time I spent running. I run a 10 minute mile. So assuming I stayed on pace for each of those miles, I ran 538 minutes or ~9 hours. My activity app, which also accounts for the weight lifting, burpees and other exercises I do said that I worked out 718 minutes or ~12 hours.

When I look at the “calories burned” in my activity app, it shows that I burned 6,877 calories through “workouts” this week.

And yet…I’m gaining weight. It truly makes no sense to me.

I ate extremely sensibly and even brought my lunch to work. And no, this isn’t muscle weight. I may need to evaluate a better balance of running and weight training or evaluate what I’m eating to make some adjustments.

How are you tracking towards your plan? Do you have any clue what I might be doing wrong that’s causing me to gain weight?

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[…] In the month of January, I ran 226.8 miles. Between January 1 and today, I’ve run 255.8 miles. My total mileage, including walking/running/other workouts, is 283.2 for January. I’m so psyched that this week I beat my all time high from week 4 of the challenge! […]

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2,018 in 2018 Week 7 Update There is a perfect apex for running, in which you can run the perfect number of miles for maximum fitness and recovery. I’ve been on both sides of this apex; I’ve undertrained and overtrained. It’s difficult to know when you’ve crossed over that apex into the overtraining zone. It’s…